About Elizabeth Bird

Elizabeth Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.

How Many Guinea Pigs Can Fit On a Plane? Answers to Your Most Clever Math Questions By Laura Overdeck Feiwel and Friends (an imprint of Macmillan) $17.99 ISBN: 978-1-250-07229-0 Ages 9-12 On shelves now Geez. How I ended up in this position I’ll never know. Me. A born and bred liberal arts major. The kind […]

The other day I posted my most popular tweet of all time. I didn’t really mean to but, as with most things on the internet, it’s never the tweet or the post that is most important to you that catches on like wildfire. In this particular case I was at Anderson’s Bookstore in Naperville to […]

It continues! As ever, folks just can’t seem to write books without slipping references to children’s books into them, left, right, and center. And while it seems an odd exercise to collect these titles, it’s also oddly informative. I’m still trying to piece together a unified theory about why this happens at all. No answers […]

Every generation gets the Frida Kahlo picture book biography it deserves. Now at some point here I’m going to write an article about why some female figures get picture books biographies while others do not, and what trends in the greater pop culture landscape control these choices. Happily, I am of the opinion that the […]

Sometimes in the course of running through the classics Kate and I are in danger of looking at books for kids with too clinical an eye. For example, I might easily forget that Are You My Mother by P.D. Eastman is, at its core, a very sad little book. Fortunately Kate’s there to remind me, […]

Patina By Jason Reynolds Atheneum, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Books $16.99 ISBN: 978-1481450188 Ages 9-12 On shelves August 29th You cannot be a children’s librarian or an adult children’s book reviewer if you do not constantly remind yourself that you have to read outside your comfort zone on a regular basis. Our current […]

The headline caught my eye. In the Guardian it read Mary Beard abused on Twitter over Roman Britain’s ethnic diversity. Subtitle, “Classicist says her assertion that there was at least some diversity under Roman rule led to ‘torrent of aggressive insults’.” Apparently the BBC recently released a video for schools in which a high-ranking Roman […]

In this week’s podcast it took me what I consider a bloody long time to realize that all our previous picture books had one glaring thing in common. They were all by white people. And sure, we talked about misappropriation with Tikki Tikki Tembo and flirted with diversity with Heather Has Two Mommies, but that […]

Fake news. It’s not exactly new. From the moment humanity created the idea of news they also saw the vast potential that comes with “tweaking” it, shall we say. As librarians one of our jobs is to help turn out children into savvy skeptics. You can understand then why I’m always on the watch for […]

This is pretty much as low-tech as a mystery can go. More than anything else it’s a celebration of the fact that I’m not actually losing my mind. Half a year ago I got the chance to help moderate this really cool Mock Caldecott program that one of my librarians set up with the kids […]

What’s My Superpower? By Aviaq Johnston Illustrated by Tim Mack Inhabit Media $16.95 ISBN: 978-1-77227-140-9 Ages 4-7 On shelves August 4th I credit Booger Beard. I will explain. While many children’s librarians will tell you that they have strived to make their book collections diverse and inclusive, they have always been hampered by what was […]

There are book trailer premieres and then there are book trailer premieres. When Tundra Books asked if I might be interested in premiering the trailer for Rebecca Green’s simply adorable How to Make Friends With a Ghost, I thought it might be fun. Still, you know what’s even more fun that a trailer premiere? A […]

Last year I went a little bit gaga over a book that I truly thought was a standout. And while Cloud and Wallfish by Anne Nesbet didn’t get any of the Newbery love I so craved for it, my admiration for Ms. Nesbet’s work is, was, and ever more shall be through the roof. Fast […]

We recorded this week’s podcast during Shark Week. What better way to celebrate than to read the shiniest fishy in the sea. This week we experimented with putting me in the left ear and Kate in the right. Is this a good way of handling the problem of our similar voices or deeply annoying to […]

Today on the Fusenews we begin with a mystery. Help me out here, gentle readers, I need your crowdsourced wisdom to solve a query for the ages. Every week I get my new copy of Publishers Weekly and settle down during my lunch break to read it cover to cover. It is one of my […]

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About A Fuse #8 Production

Features everything from librarian previews of upcoming children's books to news, reviews, and videos. If it has something to do with children's literature, it will rate a mention here.

Betsy Bird is the Youth Materials Specialist of New York Public Library. She's reviewed for The New York Times and Kirkus, writes articles for Horn Book and SLJ, and wrote the picture book Giant Dance Party. You can contact her at Fusenumber8@gmail.com or follow her on . . .